


Sinister

by alassenya



Category: Lost
Genre: Eerie, Gen, Premonitions, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alassenya/pseuds/alassenya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief moment from Charlie's last night in Sydney.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sinister

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Originally written for aralinde ([Bibliotech](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliotech/pseuds/bibliotech)) who wanted something sinister.   
> 2\. This was written and posted in May 2005, during Season 1. It remains eerily consistent with canon.

Charlie shivered as he walked briskly down Darlinghurst Road towards his hotel, ignoring both the men who tried to entice him into their seedy clubs and the girls who huddled together in doorways, cursing the rain that stripped away what little glamour they had been able to conjure up out of skimpy clothes and cheap makeup. The wind howled through the narrow spaces between the buildings, driving the rain almost horizontally through the streets, and a siren sounded in the distance as the storm took its customary toll of Sydney’s trees and roofs.

As he walked past Llankelly Place he heard a reedy but passion-filled voice calling out over the howling wind, and turned his head to look at the speaker. The man was painfully thin and barefoot - hardly surprising - but his eyes burned with the fever of semi-psychotic evangelism as he accosted passers-by and exhorted them to lay aside their wicked ways and be one with the Lord. He carried a tattered Gideon bible in one hand and wore a sandwich board that read, inevitably, “The End of the World is Nigh”. Charlie almost smiled at the message, so indicative of the lost, the forgotten, the mentally unstable, the ones who found comfort in the coming Apocalypse. He had seen it before, in his altar boy days, and it didn’t frighten him.

Their eyes met, and Charlie steeled himself for the verbal onslaught. To his surprise, though, the manic fervour in the preacher’s face melted away, replaced by puzzlement, and then by fear. Charlie faltered and almost stumbled as he tried to work out why the man should be afraid of him.

The preacher raised a gaunt hand, slowly, uncertainly, as if to ward off whatever evil he thought might be approaching, and took a half-step back into the shadows. When he did speak his tone was low and matter-of-fact, tinged with pity.

“The end of the world is nigh,” he said. “God forgive you.”

Charlie couldn’t say why those few words chilled him more than the rain or the wind or the tug in his gut that told him he was due for his next fix. He stood, transfixed, for several seconds, but the preacher didn't speak again, just stared at him with burning eyes. Charlie forced himself to turn away, clutching at his jacket and fixing his eyes firmly on the pavement in front of him as he hurried up the street.

It was only a half-starved madman in an alley off King’s Cross. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

He shivered again, and tried to believe it was from the cold.


End file.
